Alabama state senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) has been asked to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations on the State of Alabama’s approach to prison reform.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) submitted the invitation to Ward in a letter Tuesday morning.
“I’ll be discussing conservative solutions to prison overcrowding and how Alabama is ground zero in the states to solve this problem,” Ward told Yellowhammer via email.
The request for Ward to testify comes as the State of Alabama is in the midst of a prolonged prison overcrowding crisis that some experts have suggested puts the state at risk of Federal intervention.
California serves as an example of what can happen when the Federal government is forced to intervene in a state’s prison system.
In the 2011 Supreme Court case Brown v. Plata, the Court required the State of California to remove 46,000 criminals from its prisons by forcing The Golden State to cut its prison population to 137.5 percent of “design capacity.”
The Public Policy Institute of California found that property crime increased by 7.6 percent the year after the mass releases. Car thefts rose almost 15 percent. In short, 24,000 more people had their car stolen in California in 2012 as a result of the state not being able to get its prison overcrowding problem under control.
Alabama’s prisons are at roughly 190 percent capacity, 50 percent higher than the level the Court mandated for California. The Yellowhammer State currently houses over 25,000 inmates in facilities designed to hold approximately 13,000.
Alabama has also seen a 95 percent increase in the cost per inmate over the last two decades. As of 2008, the state was spending $15,178 per inmate each year. That’s $41.47 for each inmate every single day.
The top officials in all three branches of Alabama’s state government came together in early June to announce the launch of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), a comprehensive study of the state’s criminal justice system aimed at finding solutions to the serious issues facing Alabama’s underfunded, overcrowded prisons.
Sen. Ward was tasked with leading the initiative.
“This is the biggest challenge our state has ever faced,” Ward said. “Alabama has to start being not only tough on crime but we have to be smart on crime. This effort represents a unified effort by all three branches of government to accomplish this goal”
Ward is scheduled to testify on July 15th at 10 a.m. in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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